It's all in what you look for

So many things in life are really all about perspective - 

I live in a drafty, termite eaten old barn of a place - 

I have a wonderful, home filled with color and love

Both true statements

Bad House

 One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago. Jonathan Carroll

I like to think that I have changed that, that I have been aware of the beauty and love and wonder around me, in the moments that I had it. and honestly that started for me, when my brother was born with Down's syndrome when I was 12 years old. I kept hearing proclamations of doom, 

"He'll never sit up" 

"Your family will be better off if they don't get attached to him." 

Even my optimistic Grandmother looked at him with tears and said "He'll have a tough row to hoe."

But I sat on the couch and rested his feet against my belly and his head by my knees and marveled at the way he laughed and met my eyes when I made silly faces, and I thought, even if his life is hard, and my life is miserable, it was worth being born just for this one happy, peaceful moment.

And both of us have had good, often wonderful lives.

Good House

 I love the best features of my house, and this could fool you into thinking it was all wonderful, but if you like the sunny side only, don't look at the pictures in the first collage

Great Yard

I couldn't show the Good and the Bad of our house and not show why we moved here in the first place, because of the 2 acres it sits on.

three good things
1. campfires with friends
2. Apples, plums, pears and blackberries for us and the deer and bear
3. sunflowers and dandelions and birds

When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It's all a matter of perspective.

Harvey Mackay

Blooms I have loved

 It is bleak and wintery here in the Northern hemisphere and with the end of the holidays, the bright colored lights and decorations are no longer around to relieve the gloom.  I have been browsing the cache of flower photographs and realize that if they can cheer me up, as they have today, then I should share them, so maybe they can remind other people as well

 that even in the mid winter, when the buds have not appeared, and the seeds are invisible, and everything is wet and cold

 life is gathering its strength, sleeping but not dead, waiting only to be kissed awake by the warming spring sun and burst into bloom once more.

 Live the winter months with as much enthusiasm as you live the spring, find the beauty that exists in the world around you and in memory as well, create warmth in the love of your friends and family

 Hold on to hope

With love, from echo

AKA  Dixie Goode

Sunflower Summer

In April I held the seed, cold and dry and almost lost.

I broke the earth
and tucked it in but left the warming and watering to larger hands than mine.

In May, a tiny green appeared
and so did slugs
and large pawed dogs
and fragile life seemed doomed

I went away
but when I returned
that tiny sprout
dwarfed me
and seemed to be trying to compete
with the redwoods
to tower in the sky.

Every day it caught my eye
and made my lips smile
and lightened my heart

by October. the proud giant bows its head to the reign of approaching winter

It appears to be near death
until the blue jays come
screeching joyously
swinging on the stalk
like children on a trampoline

feasting on the seeds they scatter

scattering seeds
so next April
when I break the earth and plant one
13 will grow

like this year,
like every year

renewed